


Life Goes On

by Chuksha



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 8th year, Conversation, Gen, Graduation, One Shot, Possibly Pre-Slash, alt universe, careers advice, civil!snape, mature!harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-09
Updated: 2017-08-09
Packaged: 2018-12-13 09:18:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11756754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chuksha/pseuds/Chuksha
Summary: It's Harry's last day at Hogwarts and he goes on one last walk to say his goodbyes. He can't leave without going back just once and finds himself at the top of the Astronomy Tower. With Snape. They Talk.One Shot.





	Life Goes On

Harry stared out across the grounds feeling mawkish. Eight years it had taken him to reach this point. A free man; with no prophecy or expectation except that in six weeks his exam results would arrive by owl post. Just like every other Hogwarts student.

He'd had a few offers; he had returned to Quidditch this year but it hadn't been as joyful, it felt like a chore. No. He wouldn't be accepting any of the invitations to Quidditch tryouts no matter how much the canons were offering for a starting salary or Ron tried to talk him into it. He'd turned down the aurors flat, the idea of spending his life chasing dark wizards had given him nightmares for a week. He'd discovered a penchant for charms, applied to a few universities, only because everyone else was. Minerva had been patient, kind, she seemed to understand that even a year after the fact Harry still couldn't get used to the idea that he had a life to live. 

He wasn't sure why he'd come up here. It was the last place anyone would look; when he'd returned he'd rather pointedly dropped astronomy as a class and no one had argued. He'd been shocked when Snape returned to potions, he knew Minerva had been struggling to fill the defence post so Kingsley had stepped in at the last minute. Snape was a different teacher without the war hanging over his head and Harry was quietly confident of at least an E in Potions when his results came through.

"One would think," Harry jumped and whipped around wand in hand before he relaxed, "a young Gryffindor such as yourself... would be out celebrating with your friends." Harry lowered his wand and stuck it back up his sleeve. He sighed and leaned on the railing, looking out over the lake. "Your father left quite the lasting impression on his final day here." Harry laughed bitterly. He could imagine.

"My father wasn't already a murder and war veteran." Snape didn't respond with platitudes, he knew better. "He had the luxury of a childhood."

"And you have the luxury of a life," Snape said softly, "do not waste it living in the past." Harry looked up. He almost called Snape a hypocrite. _Almost_. He realised that he'd managed to go the year without saying a word to the man outside of a classroom and the odd perfunctory greeting.

"I didn't think anyone would come up here today." Snape fixed him with a sharp look. 

"You are not as mysterious as you think you are, Mr Potter." 

"Harry," he said softly.

"What?" Snape seemed genuinely surprised.

"My name, my name's Harry, not Mr Potter." Snape didn't answer verbally. His nod was enough. 

"He would have been very proud today, to see your cohort thriving." Given where they were stood Harry didn't have to ask who Snape meant. "You in particular." Harry let out a short burst of air from his nostrils. It was something like a bittersweet laugh. No one else seemed to have even noticed the date, Harry had found it strangely fitting that today was the last day for those old enough to walk to the gate and apparate away. 

"This is the first time I have been back up here since..." Harry admitted. 

"I am aware." No judgement, Harry wondered if Snape had been back since but he had more sense than to ask. 

"I kept reliving it." Not just nightmares, actually reliving it in his mind, "chasing you down there, you could have killed me in a heartbeat, I was completely blindsided and I still didn't see the truth." Snape shot him a look of confusion, and perhaps distaste, at the turn the conversation had taken.

"You came here to reminisce?" Harry snorted.

"No," he admitted, "I came to atone." No one else seemed to understand the guilt, soul crushing, all because he hadn't been watching properly. "It seems a fitting spot for saying goodbye." 

"You have nothing to atone for." Harry turned with a sigh and looked into the centre of the room. His eyes seemed to trace the trajectory Dumbledore's body had taken that night of their own accord. 

"I didn't see it, it was right here in front of me and I completely missed it." 

"You were never meant to... he was a very good liar." Harry blinked and looked up slowly.  A strange thing for the spy to say. 

"One presumes you have heard enough of your mother's eyes and your father's face." Harry choked slightly on the air that caught in the back of his throat. He hadn't expected anything like that, not from Snape. "Lies." Harry felt frozen, stuck like he couldn't properly process what he was hearing. "Her eyes were never so old, his face never so worn." Harry thought he finally understood why Snape had come to find him today. 

"Did Professor McGonagall put you up to this, sir?" Harry knew she worried about him. She'd spent enough time this year trying to make him see more than the dreaded unknown when he looked to the future. 

"Severus." 

"Excuse me?"

"My name is Severus. You have earned the right to use it this year." It felt like a weight lifted off his shoulders. This year. Not last year. Not in the war. He'd done it by being like every other kid and getting through school. He'd earned this man's respect, not with acts of blind heroism in the heat of war but by beginning to rebuild a life after the fact. He'd done it with the choices he'd made not the prophecy he'd fulfilled. "We did not expect you to return." Harry had battled himself, it had taken everything he had to come back here in September like any other student. 

"Too many people," Harry said softly, "gave, sacrificed and risked too much for me to throw it back in their face by not getting the education they fought for me and people like me to have. Including you." They lapsed into another silence. Snape didn't ask what Harry thought people like him were. _Muggle raised, muggle born, half-blood_ ; it hung in the air between them, unsaid but acknowledged all the same. The ministry was still up in arms trying to establish real education reform but no one knew yet what that meant. The best idea so far had been a magical primary school but that was fraught with difficulty and unlikely to come to fruition.

"The Italian universities are renowned for their charms courses, The French for their transfiguration," Harry didn't look up, of course Snape knew he'd applied to a few European schools as well, Harry was going to be having words with the headmistress about student confidentiality, "an academic reference from Filius," Harry's heart skipped a beat that Snape knew he'd pick charms, "which I am led to believe you have at your disposal," Harry had asked and had been pleased to find that Professor Flitwick had put him through his paces before he'd agree, "and the undoubtedly excellent exam scores your studies will produce," _was that a compliment?_ _From Snape?_ Harry didn't interrupt, "would suffice in convincing the Professor Sposito," Harry didn't ask how Snape knew who the head of the department for charms at Sapienza was, "of your suitability to study there, despite your presumably appalling grasp of the Italian language." Harry couldn't hide his surprise. Everyone had been pushing him towards transfiguration. He could become an animagus; he'd definitely be something winged they had speculated, he was powerful enough they had insisted. Harry had baulked at the idea, he didn't want to be powerful. "You are not your father." Those words from Snape nearly knocked his legs out from under him. Harry wondered how long Snape had taken to come to that particular realisation. He swallowed the lump in his throat.

Harry didn't know what to say. Somehow Snape knew exactly why Harry had decided that transfiguration wasn't for him. Harry wanted to leave the past in the past not spend his life trying to emulate a man he never knew. 

"I've been studying Italian on my own, I visited a campus a few months back. It's beautiful." He said eventually with a smile, one of the charms professors had been very kind and given him a lot of advice. He hadn't gotten very far, but he could probably survive a long weekend in the Italian capital during the summer with what he'd managed to teach himself.

"Do explore Rome whilst you are there... Harry. You will find you are not the first young soldier to find a home within its walls." Harry had caught glimpses; the place was scarred and aged by war, time and the movement of people. It had been nice to walk busy streets and not be recognised. To see what a bustling tourist city looked like.

"I always considered this place home, then a prison, sanctuary, battlefield... never really saw it as a school. Too many memories I suppose." Harry sighed softly. Snape let him wallow for a minute before he spoke again.

"Filius plans to retire, it took Minerva rather a lot of effort to convince him to return at all." Harry wasn't sure why Snape was telling him this. "He will wait until there is a sufficiently qualified professor to replace him, but no longer." 

"Like you're waiting for Malfoy?" Harry asked flippantly. Snape's eyes bore into him. 

"Draco Malfoy will never be a professor, he hasn't the temperament," Snape smirked at Harry's look, Snape had a lot of nerve judging anyone else on their temperament to be a teacher with his history. "No, perhaps even your children will grow to pass through my classroom in time." Snape had no intention of leaving then. Somehow that was a comfort to Harry. To know the school was in safe hands. He felt stupidly attached to this place, duty bound to stay close and defend it. If Snape was here he could neglect that duty, Snape would lay down his life before he let this school fall. Apparently, he was willing enough to do it.

"If they are ever born, I'll make sure to teach them Victorian flower language before their first potions class." Snape looked appalled, and then half nodded as if to himself. Harry had waited eight years to let the man know he understood that message. 

"Perhaps... do not keep Filius waiting too long. He has indicated a thirst for travel in his retirement." Harry considered it. That was the first idea someone had given him for a career that didn't fill him with dread. 

"This school deserves a charms professor who knows that they're doing." Harry conceded. "Five years is a long time." That was how long it would take him, to qualify to be a professor, to study his craft and master it. To build a reputation worthy of the school based on his academic pursuits alone. If Minerva would even take him on at the age that he would be.

"I have a handful of galleons on you achieving the certificate in four years." Harry was humbled by the vote of confidence. "And returning in the fifth." 

"Who even took that bet?" Harry asked, eyebrow raised in surprise. 

"Sybil's tea leaves advise that you'll do it in three." Harry laughed at the notion and Snape's quiet insistence that Harry might be The Saviour but he still wasn't _that good_. Snape was one of only two professors who had treated him like every other student this year and he had appreciated it. 

He would laugh again when he watched Severus scowl on his first day as a teacher as he handed a smirking Sybil Trelawny several galleons in the Hogwarts staff room. The fact that the man had led the toast welcoming Harry to the staff had taken the edge from that scowl and formed the foundations of a working friendship over the following years... Although, it did become something of a standing joke that after seven years of house Quidditch wagers with Minerva, and now this, Severus aught to have learned not to bet his galleons against Harry Potter every time the young head of house took the cup to his office. Harry didn't mind; he usually spent the winnings on firewhisky for the end of term feast staff after-party anyway, or Severus did depending on what colours the hall had been decorated that year, and as usual, Minerva and Sybil drank most of it between them. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to my amazing fiance, who puts up with my writer quirks, checks my grammar for glaring issues, brainstorms chapter/work titles and is being very decent about me dragging him into the Potter fandom.


End file.
